Authorities on Sunday were hunting for the last of three inmates who escaped from a Louisiana jail after removing concrete blocks from a deteriorating wall.

“We would prefer that he surrender himself peaceably,” St Landry parish sheriff Bobby J Guidroz said in a statement, “but we will not rest until he is captured.”

Detectives and special tactical officers were following leads on Saturday in pursuit of 24-year-old Keith Eli, who remained at large three days after he and two other inmates escaped the St Landry jail in south-western Louisiana, said Maj Mark LeBlanc, a spokesperson for the sheriff. Eli had been jailed on a charge of second-degree murder.

One of the escapees, 24-year-old Johnathan Jevon Joseph, was captured on Friday after a brief chase. LeBlanc said investigators following a tip found Joseph, who was jailed on charges of rape and other crimes, hiding out at a home. Joseph ran to a nearby storage shed, where he surrendered after being cornered, LeBlanc said.

The third escapee, 26-year-old Joseph Allen Harrington, died by suicide with a hunting rifle on Thursday after police found him at a home and used a loudspeaker to urge him to come out, said Deon Boudreaux, the Port Barre police chief. Before his escape, Harrington had faced several felony charges, including home invasion.

It wasn’t the first bold jail escape in Louisiana this year. In May, 10 inmates broke out of a New Orleans jail after crawling through a hole behind a toilet and leaving a message that read “To Easy LoL”. Authorities searched across multiple states for the escapees as local officials pointed fingers over who was to blame for the jailbreak. It took five moths before all 10 inmates were recaptured.

As sheriff, Guidroz oversees the St Landry jail in Opelousas, about 140 miles (225km) north-west of New Orleans. He has said the inmates escaped after discovering “a degrading part of an upper wall area” and over time managed to remove the mortar holding the wall’s concrete blocks together. That enabled them to remove enough blocks to slip through the wall.

The inmates then used sheets to scale the jail’s outer wall, drop on to a first-floor roof and lower themselves to the ground, Guidroz said in a news release on Wednesday.

The sheriff said the breakout would be investigated internally.